Healthy Food & Drink Resources (09)

Understanding Food Labels and Health Claims
This web site says that you should have a clear understanding of how to read nutrition labels before you go to the store, in order to buy healthy foods. This site breaks down definitions of serving sizes, servings per container, total carbs, protein weight, sodium weight, saturated fat and total fat, and more. There are also tips such as checking the list of ingredients, differentiating between total fat and saturated fat, figuring out the percentage of calories from fat, paying attention to serving size and more.

Where Does Your Food Come From?
A useful food web site for consumers and food advocates. They emphasize how to buy local, how to find good food, how to take action to better your local food system, find a food or farming conference, starting a farm to college program, getting healthier foods at your child's school and more. There are also news stories about food information, diseases, buying organic food and more. You can view news under the topics of biotechnology, food economics, environment, farm policy, health and food safety, local foods, and more.

Insights on Fruits and Vegetables
This site on fruits and vegetables is by the Produce for Better Health Foundawtion. Not surprisingly, it argues the case with vast amounts evidence for the importance of fruits and vegetables—that eating at least five and as many as ten servings each day can help protect against major diseases like cancer, high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease. The real kicker is that more is better when it comes to eating a variety of colorful produce. The rest of the site has nutritional information for educators and consumers. There are healthy vegetable recipes as well as a section for healthy events and programs.

Noni Juice's Popularity in Asia
Ancient healers in Polynesia used noni to treat cuts and other complaints, while elderly village folk in Malaysia ate the boiled leaves and fruit as a way to clean blood. This article says Tahitian noni is touted as the next herbal panacea. But it also says that the noni juice craze originated in America when scientists heard of it in the 90s. According to them, noni contains proxeronine and the enzyme proxeronase. These react in the gut to form xeronine, an alkaloid which, they claim, aids cells function - and produces various therapeutic effects. While scientific evidence is limited, tales about noni's benefits have proliferated, spread via the Internet and word of mouth.